Mozart’s ‘Zaide’ at the Royal Festival Hall, 1952

A festival of Mozart after the Festival of Britain

Mike Ashman

Mozart himself probably called the Singspiel K344/336b Das Serail (The Seraglio)
after the contemporary operetta from which his librettist took its plot and
characters.The music paper used suggests that he worked on the piece in Salzburg
in 1779/80 after returning from an extended tour to Mannheim and Paris. He
completed only 15 vocal numbers with short vocal cues (no libretto has survived),
which could correspond to the first two acts of the work.There was no specific
commission, and this first attempt at a German opera in 11 years (after Bastien and
Bastienne) was partly inspired by the entertaining visits to Salzburg of theatrical
troupes led by his friends Johann Heinrich Böhm and Emanuel Schikaneder. Mozart
composed for both companies, including a revision of the incidental music for
Thamos, König in Ägypten – which shared both the use of melodrama and themes of
rescue and forgiveness with the Serail project.

Das Serail (only named Zaide, after the drama’s heroine, by its eventual 19th-century
publisher Johann Andre) may also have been intended by Mozart as a trial run, or
even an audition piece, for the national Singspiel troupe (Nationaloperette) that
Emperor Joseph II had recently established to run alongside his theatre of spoken
drama at Vienna’s Burgtheater. One condition required of a composer to work for
this new company was that he should write a comic opera, which the Emperor, or
his advisers, regarded as central to the re-establishment of German language
theatre in Austria-Hungary. Another vital ingredient in the mix of the Serail/Zaide
experiment was Mozart’s fascination, amounting almost to obsession, with the
form of melodrama which he had witnessed in Mannheim in the Medea of Georg Benda. ‘There is no singing in it –only recitation, to which the music is like
a sort of obbligato accompaniment to recitative’, wrote Mozart. He was soon
rumoured to be about to compose a Semiramide in this style, but used melodrama
instead in Thamos and in Zaide for Gomatz’s Unerforschliche Fuegung and Sultan
Soliman’s rage (at, presumably, the beginning of Act II) when Zaide has escaped.

The librettist of Serail/Zaide, Johann Andreas Schachtner, was a close friend of the
Mozart family and something of an all-rounder. Court trumpeter to the Archbishop
of Salzburg, he was a poet and composer and, for Mozart, translated La finta
giardiniera and Idomeneo into German, wrote recitatives for Bastien und Bastienne and
the text of a chorus for Thamos. For their first collaboration on a complete work,
Schachtner and Mozart took the popular plot theme of rescue of a European from
the seraglio, or harem.This was made topical at the time by both the actual
incidents, and tabloid press fabrications, of Muslim pirates preying on
Mediterranean shipping, particularly to obtain female and male slaves for what one
report called ‘various purposes’.This mixture of Beauty and the Beast and nostalgie
de la boue had been given literary and musical credibility earlier in the century by
Voltaire’s Zaire (the play had been given in Salzburg as recently as 1777 and the
name is already suggestive of that of Mozart’s heroine), Gluck’s La rencontre imprévue
and Haydn’s L’incontro improviso.

With Mozart, especially for Act I of their project, Schachtner raided Das Serail, oder
Die unvermuthete Zusammenkinft in der Sclaverey zwischen Vater,Tochter und Sohn (The
Seraglio, or the unexpected Reunion in Slavery of Father, Daughter and Son), a
1777 libretto by Franz Joseph Sebastiani. He took from it all the main characters,
naming one of them, Sebastiani’s ‘Renegade’ (a once Christian Mohammedan),
Allazim. After the Trio O selige Wonne (presumably) brings Act I to a close, Schachtner’s scenario strikes out in some different directions from Sebastiani’s – in,
for example, the dungeon scene aria of Zaide, Trostlos schluchzet Philomele which has
no dramatic equivalent in the 1777 score. Many of these changes strike a darker
note than the Sebastian ‘original’, and it has been suggested that one of the reasons
why Mozart was unable or unwilling to complete the opera was because he felt
that it was becoming too serious for contemporary Viennese taste, and for the
specific brief of Joseph II’s new company.

The Sebastiani Serail ended happily with one of those sudden revelations of
unsuspected consanguinity about which the 18th century (Mozart not excepted)
was always enthusiastic. Gomatz and Zaide – despite or perhaps because of their
passion – were revealed to be brother and sister; Allazim was their father who, 20
years before, had saved the Sultan’s life. All were pardoned and free to go home.
No music or libretto exists to prove which way the Mozart/ Schachtner team was
going. But when the composer took the score to Vienna with him and showed it to
Gottlob Stephanie, inspector of Joseph II’s Nationaloperette, the result was the
libretto for Die Entführung aus dem Serail, crucially modified by Stephanie himself
from an existing drama. It was one of the few real successes of the new company,
so in some respects Serail/ Zaide, literally unfinished as it remained, achieved one
of its original goals. Die Entfuhrung is a neat resolution of the conflicts between
tragedy and comedy that Mozart could not quite resolve in his Serail project and a
perfect crowning of the 18th century‘s ‘rescue from the seraglio’ operas.

The subsequent history of the work begins with his widow Constanze’s campaigns
to make good on all that Mozart had left behind. She found Serail in his scattered
manuscripts in 1799 and eventually sold it to Johann Andre, who gave the work its
present name.The fragments were first published in 1838, and a first performance
of them given in Frankfurt on 27January 1866. Mozart’s autograph contains no
overture, but a number of modern performances (including the present one)
adopted Alfred Einstein’s belief that the Symphony No.32 was the composer’s own
intended beginning (although it is scored for a larger orchestra, was written earlier
than Serail/ Zaide and uses ‘Turkish’ effects not present in the opera).

There have been various attempts in modern times to write new dialogue to
substitute for Schachtner’s lost words, or to concoct a narration (as devised for the
present performance, although not preserved on tape) depicting what may have
happened if Mozart had actually finished the opera.The Sebastiani ‘happy’ ending
has not inevitably been used. Modern companion pieces to Zaide have been written
by both Luciano Berio and Chaya Cernowin. Some contemporary stagings have
been bolder still with Zaide.These include choreographer Lucinda Childs in 1995
at Brussels’s Theatre Royal de la Monnaie and Peter Sellars’s Mozart 250th
anniversary production in Vienna, New York, London, and Aix. Sellars added
excerpts from the contemporary Thamos, König in Ägypten music and set his staging
(played by the original-instrument Concerto Köln under Louis Langrée) in a
contemporary sweatshop, cast entirely with African-American and Asian singers.

The present performance was one of a series of four concerts. Undoubtedly in the
spirit of enterprise and initiative in the arts in Britain promoted by the previous
year’s Festival of Britain, the three-year-old London Mozart Players, under their
founding principal conductor Harry Blech, put on (then) a four-concert series of
rare Mozart, with the support of the BBC, in London’s new Royal Festival Hall
between May and July 1952.The other programmes included the oratorio Die
Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebotes (with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Adele Leigh and Jennifer
Vyvyan), the Thamos incidental musical and Il re pastore.

The ‘specialist’ press reaction was typical of an age to which the Third Programme
and the long-playing gramophone record had already lent a desire to assess and
strictly catalogue the works of the great masters according to perceived, and
completed, merit. Of the dedicated music magazines, Opera, Music & Musicians and
The Musical Times did not publish reviews of Zaide (which would not have an actual
stage premiere in the UK until the City Opera Club’s Toynbee Hall performances
in London the following January). A. J. of The Musical Times wondered if ‘the
apparently indiscriminate applause for all Mozart’s music (mature and immature,
first-rate and second-rate alike) indicate that the attraction lies in the honeyed
surface of the music, free from what the layman calls discord’ and even suggested
that promoters and conductors might have discovered that Mozart’s music ‘requires
the employment of only a few performers’ and ‘can be ‘got through’ by conductors
of little experience and rudimentary technique’. In hurrying to exempt the BBC
and Harry Blech from this charge, he still felt that the ‘recent series of concerts
seemed at least to give assent to the fashion of worshipping Mozart’s name rather
than his achievement’.

The cast of Zaide included Peter Pears, returning from recent work in the concert
hall and in creating new roles for Benjamin Britten to the Mozart opera which had
helped to establish him in the 1940s. In the hall, although not heard here, the
actress Jill Balcon, wife of Cecil and mother of Daniel Day-Lewis, was making
something of a speciality of narrating musical scores (she recorded Schumann’s
Manfred with Beecham).The South African tenor Lloyd Strauss-Smith had actually
been a London resident since 1947, where his 20-year stay included roles in over
80 operas, many of them contemporary and on the radio.The Dutch soprano Gré
Brouwenstijn was at this time on the verge of an international career in Verdi
(Elisabeth de Valois at Covent Garden),Wagner (Elisabeth and Sieglinde at
Bayreuth) and Beethoven’s Leonore.
© Mike Ashman, 2009

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791)

Zaide

Track 1: Act 1

Track 2: Act 2

Synopsis by Alison Latham

ACT 1
In the Sultan’s garden
A group of slaves accept their fate and resolve to make the best of things (No 1).

Alone, Gomatz laments the ‘inscrutable Providence’ that has led him, an innocent
man, to be exiled and enslaved alongside criminals; tormented and exhausted, he
longs for oblivion and finally falls asleep (No 2).

Zaide, the Sultan’s favourite in his harem, approaches Gomatz and concludes from his face
that he must be European. She wants to wake him to inquire about the fate of her parents, but
thinks better of it and places a small bag in his lap as a gift.*

Zaide sings a lullaby to the sleeping Gomatz (No 3).

Gomatz wakes and discovers the bag, which contains some jewels and a portrait, with which
he falls in love. A note enjoins him to secrecy but says that if the picture pleases him, he
should go in disguise to the square.

Clutching the portrait, Gomatz ecstatically resolves to defy his fate (No 4).

Heavily veiled, Zaide pretends to accuse Gomatz of theft of the portrait; his protestations
reveal his integrity so she decides to disclose her true identity.They resolve to live and die
together, but Gomatz is determined that they should escape.

Zaide and Gomatz sing of their happiness at meeting (No 5).

Allazim arrives and challenges Gomatz about his plan to flee. Gomatz reminds Allazim that,
in spite of his high position in the Sultan’s court, he too is a slave. He asks for Allazim’s help.
Allazim is drawn to the young couple and resolves to help them.

Gomatz pours out his thanks to Allazim but his thoughts keep returning to Zaide
(No 6).

Allazim advises them to escape at once by sea.

Allazim resolves to have courage and take his destiny into his own hands (No 7).

Allazim bids Zaide and Gomatz farewell, promising to comfort the Sultan over the loss of
Zaide; if he fails he will follow them both.

At sunrise Zaide, Gomatz and Allazim express their joy, though Zaide briefly has
dark forebodings, and they pray for a peaceful future as a reward for their
constancy (No 8).

ACT 2
A room in the Sultan’s palace
Sultan Soliman is enraged to learn of Zaide’s escape, especially at her treachery in
abandoning him for a Christian slave, and swears bloody revenge: a proud lion may
be tamed but if treated shamefully will become a tyrant (No 9).

Osmin tries to calm him by presenting him with a new female slave, but Soliman drives them
away, threatening to have them whipped.

Osmin makes fun of Soliman’s foolish behaviour (No 10).

Zaide and Gomatz have been captured and are led in as prisoners by Zaram. Zaide is
convinced that she is about to die; Gomatz will face death unafraid as long as he dies
alongside Zaide. Soliman threatens them with dreadful punishment.

Soliman tells the captives that he rewards merit but punishes wrong (No 11).

Zaide cannot understand why she should die simply for wanting freedom rather than slavery.

Zaide compares her fate with that of a caged nightingale (No 12).

Zaram announces Soliman’s verdict: Zaide and Gomatz are sentenced to death but Gomatz
will be tortured first. Enraged, Zaide accuses Soliman of tyranny; he will not assuage his
hatred with blood.

Zaide accuses him of being a tiger gloating over his prey; only death will end her
misery (No 13).

Zaram enters with Allazim, whom he has also captured. Soliman sentences him to death.
Allazim reveals his identity: it was he who, as admiral of a European ship, once freed Soliman
from pirates, only to be captured himself.

Allazim reflects that it is only those who have known suffering before they rise to
power who can understand their slaves (No 14).

Soliman pardons Allazim and invites him to be his friend but rejects Allazim’s plea for
clemency for Zaide and Gomatz.

Gomatz calms Zaide, saying death will crown their love; Allazim, anguished, again
asks for compassion for the lovers; Zaide begs to die instead of Gomatz; Soliman
dismisses their entreaties (No 15).

Before she is brought to execution, Zaide reveals that she is the daughter of Prince Ruggiero,
who was taken captive. In an effort to find him, her mother set out with Zaide and her
brother (who was three years her senior), only to die in slavery. Gomatz suddenly recognizes
Zaide as his sister, and Allazim announces that he is the lost Prince Ruggiero. Soliman grants
freedom to them all and allows them to return to their native land.

* passages in italic are taken from an anonymous libretto called The Seraglio, or:The
Unexpected Encounter in Slavery of Father, Daughter and Son (Bolzano, 1799) which is
believed to have been the source of Schachtner’s libretto and thus provides the plot
surrounding Mozart’s musical numbers
© Alison Latham

Recorded at a performance on the 14 July 1952, at the Royal Festival Hall, London

This recording is from the Harewood Collection at Music Preserved.

Remastering by Roger Beardsley

• Gré Brouwenstijn
  Zaide
• Peter Pears
  Gomatz
• Bruce Boyce
  Allazim
• Alexander Young
  Sultan Soliman
• Owen Brannigan
  Osmin
• Lloyd Strauss-Smith
  Zaram
• London Mozart Players
  
• Harry Blech
  Conductor